Invisible Cities (A Harvest/Hbj Book) [Paperback]

I think that anything that's written about this book will pale in comparison to the wonders it contains. This is my best shot at capturing a movie with black and white still photography.

Every page or two contains an incredibly unique description of a city that itself stands as a symbol for some other deeper meaning. I got the impression that each of these cities could have spawned an entire 300-page novel but you get all of their wonder and meaning condensed into a page or two of beautifully written prose poetry. It's like walking through an art gallery where every painting is not only distinct from every other one, but also different that anything you've ever imagined yourself. For the first half of the book I kept worrying that it couldn't possibly continue to be this good'it did! Then for the second half of the book I kept worrying about the fact that I was quickly running out of pages in what was one of the most special books I've ever read. The cities aren't just interesting for their bizarre and astounding architecture, but also the customs and beliefs of the people that live there and ultimately the meaning that you can find in each of them.

This is all tied together by intermittent conversations between Kahn and Polo and their musings on the nature of reality and meaning.

I don't think that any book will change anyone's life. But the best books give you a new perspective on the world, or a germ of an idea or a glimpse at a feeling'a shred of deeper meaning that you can then take with you and make something out of if you so choose. This is one of those books.

Give it a shot. All it will take is a couple of pages to hook you.

This short book is both a parable about power and a wonderful compendium of magical places as enchanting as the late medieval traveler's tales that Calvino has clearly absorbed. The aged dictator Khan sits at the edge of a vast empire that he has never actually toured. The nimble Marco Polo, by contrast, possesses no territory; only the memory of his many travels.

Like Sheherazade recounting her thousand-and-one tales, Polo finds himself in the position of having to recollect for Khan the descriptions of the many cities that he ostensibly possesses. Polo thus becomes the Khan's only source for information about the cities in his territory; hence their 'invisibility.' But the descriptions he gives of the cities seem increasingly fantastic and elaborate. The Khan is skeptical. Polo, for his part, insists that he is being frank.

The question at the center of the book becomes: who possesses these cities? Kublai Khan, or Marco Polo? What are we to make of the possibility that Polo, for all his protestations, is being less than honest with the Khan? In which case, do the cities exist only in the traveler's imagination? If so, is the Khan's empire therefore merely a dream and an invention?

The brevity of each section (1 to 3 pages) and the sensual pleasures Calvino's descriptions provoke makes this book exquisite bed-time reading. In fact, older children would probably also enjoy the beauty of this charming tale.

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening..."

So writes Italo Calvino, in one of the more ethereal experimental books he wrote. While not as weird as a book made up of tarot card adventures, "Invisible Cities" is a story that defies easy classification -- it's soft, dreamlike narrative in which one man tells another about the magical cities he's seen. Or, possibly, has not seen.

The famous Venetian explorer Marco Polo arrives in the empire of Kublai Khan, and the two men become friends. In the evenings, Marco tells the Khan of many fabulous cities -- the grey metal and stone Fedora, the stilted Zenobia, the haunted moonlit Zobeide, the sensual and bejeweled Anastasia, the cloud-straddling Baucis, the watery Esmeralda, a city of dead people known as Adelma, the dirt-choked Argia, the hazy rose-tinted Irene, and many others.

"Invisible Cities" isn't really a story so much as a series of beautiful pictures-in-prose. It's like we're watching Calvino paint us portraits of his fantasy cities with his words -- and except for Kublai Khan and Marco Polo occasionally conversing about trade, travel or chess, there is no actual plot here. It's just gorgeous portraits of imaginary cities.

And therein lies its charm. Calvino came up with dozens of fantastical cities in here. Few if any of them could actually exist, but they are so suffused with sensual beauty ("its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim...") and darkness ("All corpses, dried in such a way that the skeleton remains sheathed in yellow skin, are carried down there, to continue their former activities...") that you don't care.

Instead, Calvino comes up with strange, weird and illogical ideas, such as a city with ho actual buildings, but lots of plumbing. There are cities of the dead and the unborn; cities of the sea, the air, the earth and the sunrise; cities where everyone is a stranger and steampunk cities rusted into oblivion. It's like he's opened a hundred doors to eerie other worlds, and let us take a single picture of each before the doors close.

"Invisible Cities" is not a book for people who like plot -- instead, it's a chance to immerse yourself in Italo Calvino's magical language and imagination.